Joshua shaw.(Museum accessions)(Biography)

In 1954 John I. H. Baur, then curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, wrote of "a group of obscure American artists" who "relying on infinitely subtle variations of tone and color" captured "their magical effects." "Spiritually they were the lyrical poets of the American countryside and the most sensitive to its nuances of mood." In this group he put George Harvey, Robert Salmon, Thomas Birch, John S. Blunt, Charles Codman, and Joshua Shaw. Works by the latter rarely attract much attention, but recently a fine group of Shaw's pictures, which descended in his family in Europe, turned up in New York. Of these eight works, five southern scenes have been acquired by the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina. The acquisition of the group, which includes the first known depiction of Greenville (see View on the Reedy River at right) was made possible by major fund-raising.

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Shaw was born and trained in England, where he had a career of many ups and downs. Growing up in poor circumstances he taught himself to draw and shoot--two skills that gave him the opportunity of moving up in the world. He came to the United States in 1817 to oversee the installation of Benjamin West's 1815 Christ Healing the Sick in the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. He also had his own reason for coming--to obtain a patent for his invention of the copper percussion cap for firearms. It turned out that he needed to establish a two-year residency in the United States before this could come about. (Years later he finally received credit and money for this endeavor.) Shaw continued his dual careers in the United States, staying on in Philadelphia and later moving to New Jersey.

He is probably best known as the artist who created the images engraved by John Hill for Picturesque Views of American Scenery (1820-1821), on which he began work shortly after he arrived. Such portfolios and books of scenic views were numerous in Britain. The trend was to produce romantic and sublime landscapes, particularly showing nature in its spectacular moods. Of Hill's planned six folios of six prints each, only three sets were completed when the publisher got cold feet. But before that occurred, Shaw, having covered the Mid-Atlantic region, set out to gather material in the South. In December of 1819, with his teenage son, he set off to sketch and paint views in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. Besides choosing his subject matter for picturesque views of the South, he also gathered information for a travelers' guide, the United States Directory, which he published in 1822. In Georgia he depicted the burning of Savannah, which took place on January 11, 1820. From there he moved on to South Carolina, stopping in Greenville, which he found pleasantly situated, "the air cool and extremely salubrious." He also found the scenery on the Reedy River to his liking, ...